As the importance of protecting against security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for highly secure identification and personal verification systems becomes more and more pressing. Biometric systems are used to recognize a person based on physiological or behavioral characteristics. Such systems analyze features based inter alia on facial photos, fingerprints, palm prints, hand geometry, handwriting, iris scans, retinal scans and vein scans. Biometric analyses are becoming critical components of a wide spectrum of highly secure identification systems.
The quality of a biometric identification system depends on many factors, such as system reliability, speed of performance, system ease of use, and system acceptance by people. Acceptance is a function of trust. Thus, many people are wary of iris scans and retinal scans, since they require positioning an open eye in front of a camera.